


Mind Games

by abrae



Series: In the Fullness of Time [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Curiosity, Deductions, Gen, Questions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 00:03:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1798174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abrae/pseuds/abrae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anna makes some deductions of her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mind Games

**November, 2031**

  
Occasionally, in the midst of a particularly boring lecture, or maybe even riding the Tube, Anna puts a decade’s worth of casual training to work and deduces the people around her. At some point during fifth form she starts doing it all the time, reflexively, though one thing observation has taught her is to keep her insights to herself. She adores Sherlock and has since she was a small girl, but at sixteen she’s not so naive as to believe that everyone else does as well.

Family, it turns out, is especially hard to deduce. She can’t imagine they hold secrets she doesn’t know, and the few she’s ferreted out ( _Mum likes to be on top_ ) are things she absolutely does not want to know. But sometimes a glittering insight will come - less deduction than the sum total of a thousand small things - and so it's no surprise to her to realize, one day, that her mum is  _dangerous_.  She doesn't know why; it comes from out of the blue, leaving it up to her to put the pieces together, and so, like Sherlock, she quiets enough to hear and see

( _steely voice and twitchy fingers, the fiery flash of her eyes; quicksilver reflexes, all movement economical, intended. control - ferocious control, at the least expected moments_ )

Where Dad's anger is explosive, Mum's lies in wait, looking for a moment of weakness to strike out at anyone who might harm her own. Anna's thought more than once that she'd hate to get on Mum's bad side.

She spends a week, two, trying to figure a way to approach her mother, all of it laid waste when, one grey November afternoon, Mum comes into her bedroom, closes the door behind her and sits on the corner of her bed with her hands on her knees.

"You've got questions," she says bluntly, and Anna starts in surprise.

"How -"

Mum tilts her head with a knowing look.

"Go on," she says. "What do you want to know?"

She'd be nervous, but for the sparkle lurking in her mother's eyes. She's waited _years_ for this, for the chance to pick and choose just the right questions to piece together a perplexing human puzzle. 

Anna licks her lips thoughtfully, then says, "You haven't always been a nurse."

Mum looks to the side with a small smile and replies, "No," and Anna knows that she's fumbled her first try. 

 _Stupid!_ she thinks, squaring her shoulders for another go.

"You - your hands get restless when someone makes you angry, like... you want to throw something... no. Like... "

( _fingers flitting over forks, knives... knives, dancing lightly, precise, each one nearly independent of the other... clutching, tightening..._ )

Anna gasps.

"A gun."

Mum's eyes widen; for a moment, she looks torn between denial and ineffable pride.

"Do _not_ tell your father about this," she warns, less mother than confidante in this moment, and Anna's heart skips an elated beat.

"He doesn't know?" she whispers conspiratorially, and Mum shakes her head.

"He knows."

Mum falls into silence, her gaze drawn away - to the window, somewhere else. Eventually, she looks back at Anna, who's very nearly stunned to see tears in her eyes.

"He doesn't like it. What I was." A pause. "Neither do I."

Anna swallows, her mind flooding with questions she knows she cannot ask. Still...

"Have you -" she blurts out, but before she can finish -

"Yes," Mum replies tersely. She gives an ironic laugh. "He's taught you quite well, hasn't he?"

Anna nods silently.

"He'd be proud. He didn't figure it out himself until it was staring him in the face."

"What?"

Mum sighs. "It was another time, Anna. Another life."

Long minutes pass, the sky outside settling into a darker shade of grey. Street lamps flicker on as Anna mulls over Mum's words, one more question, long wondered, aching to be asked.

"Was it over... Dad?"

She doesn't know what she expects - laughter, maybe, it seems so far-fetched. But something in the way they both look at Dad begs the question, and the eyes Mum raises to hers are strangely soft, given the turn the conversation has taken.

Mum shakes her head. 

"Not like you think. He learned, that night, that I'd do anything for your father." Her smile seems sad in the growing shadows. "A few months later, I learned the same thing."

Anna is her mum's girl, always has been. They share a sharp wit and intolerance of fools - passion and drive, and a terrifyingly fierce loyalty to the people they love. But she's her dad's girl, too; she has his acceptance and his bottomless capacity for forgiveness. His optimism, even when things seem darkest. It's that part of her, she thinks, that compels her to stand, kneel by her mum and wrap her arms around her waist in a tight embrace.

Mum's hand comes to rest on her bright blonde hair, stroking it gently in the dim twilight.


End file.
